Bowling-alley



,No. 623,933. Patented pr. 25, I899. w. H. WIGGINS.

BOWLING ALLEY.

(Application filed. Oct. 11, 1898.)

(No Model.)

III",

I O O O O l INVENTOR M ATTORNEY NI'IED STATES PATENT FFrcsEo WILLIAM H. VVIGGINS, OF NEW YORK, N. Y., ASSIGNOR TO THE BRUNSWICK- BALKE-COLLENDER COMPANY, OF SAME PLACE AND CINCINNATI, OIIIO.

BOWLING-ALLEY.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 623,933, dated April 25, 1 899;

Application filed October 11, 1898- Serial No. 693,240. (No model.)

To all whom it may concern:-

Be it known that I, WILLIAM H. WIGGINS, of New York, Brooklyn borough, county of Kings, State of New York,have invented a new and useful Improvement in Bowling-Alleys; and I do hereby declare that the following is a full, clear, and exact description of the same, reference being had to the accompanying drawings, forming part of this specification.

My invention relates to bowling-alleys, and has for its object to improve the construction thereof with reference particularly to what are called the ball-gutters of an alley, which are the trough-like conduits located contiguously to the sides of the alley-bed and which operate to conduct to the pit end of the alley any ball which may be thrown or rolled off from the bed of the alley by the player, so that said ball may be picked up by the pitboy and returned to the players end of the alley by means of what is usually called the ball return-way.

As is well known to those skilled in the art of building and familiar with the uses of bowlin g-alleys, the ball-gutter located at each side of the alley-bed is a simple trough-like conduit rectangular in cross-section and composed of the vertical edge or side of the alleybed, a vertically-arranged stringer located at a suitable distance from said alley-bed edge and running parallel therewith, and a fiat bottom board or floor-like surface located somewhat below the top surface of the alley-bed and like the latter running in a horizontal plane from a point about coincident with the balk-line of the alley-bed to the pit of the alley, into which a ball which may be rolled along through said ball-gutter will be discharged. In this universally-employed construction of ball-gutter there is and always has been this serious defect or objection namely, that the misplayed balls which fly off from the bed of the alley into the ball-gutter travel in an irregular or crooked line from the time they enter the ball-gutter until they are discharged therefrom, often striking or impinging against both the stringer at one side of the ball-gutter and the upper edge or corner of the alley-bed or hallway at the other side of the gutter, such frictional contact and impingement of the balls against these parts of the alley resulting in ruptures or a splintering of the stock of the balls at the vicinities of the linger-holes therein, which renders the balls defective for play and soon renders necessary the purchase of new perfect ones and also operating in time topartially Wear away the edge of the alley-bed, thus spoiling the construction of the upper surface of the said bed at the vicinities of its two edges. Furthermore, this old-fashioned ball-gutter is hard to keep free of dirt, which collects in its angular corners. my invention to provide the ordinary bowling-alley bed with ball-gutters arranged, as heretofore, contiguous to either side of the bed, but so diiferently constructed that a ball in passing from the alley-bed into the gutter will, after its entrance into the latter, be conducted to the pit end of the alley in a straight line located centrally of the gutter and so that it will not in the least impinge upon either the upper corner of the alley-bed or against the stringer and also so that the gutter while presenting a more unique appearance than the old-fashioned rectangular or boxlike conduit will possess no angles or corners in which dirt can accumulate, but will be of such shape that it can be easily kept clean.

To these main ends and objects myinvention maybe said to consist, essentially,in a bowling alley ball-gutter the bottom of which is concave in cross-section during the entire length of the gutter, the curvature being preferably circular and of such degree that it will easily accommodate and centralize the largest-sized ball used in bowling and conduct said ball to the pit end of the alley without permitting any contacting of the surface of the rolling ball with the longitudinal edge or corner of the working face or top surface of the bed of the alleyand so, also, that all the smaller-sized balls will travel along in said ball-gutter in a straight line and centrally of the gutter, all

I propose by l as will be hereinafter more fully described and as will be most particularly pointed out in the claim of this specification.

To enable those skilled in the art to which my invention relates to make and use bowling-alleys provided with my novel construc tion of ball-gutter, I will now proceed to more fully describe my invention, referring by letters to the accompanying drawings which form part of this specification and in which I have illustrated my invention carried into effect in that precise form of ball-gutter in which I have so far successfully practiced my invention largely in the building of bowlingalleys.

In the drawings, Figure 1 is a top view of an ordinary bowling-alley bed or ballway provided with my improved ballgutters and drawn about correctly to a scale, but with the middle portion of the bowling-alley broken away and the end portions represented as moved toward each other in order to illustrate the bowling-alley within the space allowed for a Patent Office drawingwithout reducing the scale so much as to make it difficult to plainly show the parts in the drawing. Fig. 2 is a partial vertical cross-section taken at a plane indicated by the dotted line of Fig. 1. Fig. 3 is a similar sectional view, but taken at a plane indicated by the dotted line 3 y of Fig. 1.

In the several figures the same part will be found always designated by the same letter of reference.

A is the bed or hallway of the alley, constructed in the usual and approved manner, while 0 and C are the duplicate ball-gutters, arranged, as usual, one at each side of the bed A and extending from the vicinity of the balk-line B at the players end of the alley clear down to the pit of the alley or to the end of the alley-bed, but constructed according to myinvention instead of being made in the old-fashioned way. The bottom surface, or the surface upon which the balls roll, in my improved gutter is composed, preferably, of two separate pieces, as seen at (J 0, Figs. :3 and 3, either halved together at their meeting edges, which coincide with a right line drawn at the middle point of the gutter, widthwise thereof, as seen at 0 Fig. 2, or tongued and grooved together, as seen at C Fig. 3, although without departing from my invention this concave bottom of the gutter may of course be, made of one single piece of either wood or other suitable material. In practice this concave gutter-bottom is made of wood, the same as the other parts of the ordinary wooden-bed bowling-alley, although of course it may be made of any other suitable material possessing su flicient strength and rigidity and sufficicntly noiseless for the purposes of a ballgutter. As clearly illustrated at Figs. 2 and 3, the curvature or concavity of the top surface of this gutter-bottom C should be such as to nearly conform to the circular curvature in central cross-section of the largest-sized ball used in bowling, the contour of which ball I have illustrated by the dotted circle 0, and thus made, it will be understood, this largestsized ball c will travel centrally from one end to the other of the ball-gutter without any liability of having its peripheral surface at any time at any place during the length of the ball-gutter impinge upon or contact with either the edge a of the bed A or with the stringer D, and hence the ball cannot possibly receive the least injury from either the said corner of the alley-bed or by contact with the said stringer. This quality of my improved ball-gutter, due to the fact of having its bottom curved and located relatively to the alley-bed and stringer, as shown, is of great importance and value, since thereby all injury of the balls is certainly avoided. Furthermore, thus constructed my improved ballgutter avoids all injury of the edge of the bed by the balls, and having no annular corners for the reception of dirt it is easily kept perfectly clean. The shape of the ball-gutter bottom also lends a novel and unique appearance to the bowling-alley structure.

The stringer D, against the inner vertical surface of which the outer edge or side of the curved gutter-bottom C butts, as clearly shown, is (as usual) made so as to possess suffieient stability to assure the maintenance in place of the said gutter-bottom and is preferably extended up some distance above the outer edge of the gutter, as shown, or to an elevation about coincident with the level of the center of the largest ball e. This ball is approximately eight and one-half inches in diameter, while at f I have illustrated by another dotted circle an eight-inch ball, while at g is similarly illustrated a seven-inch ball, and at 7L a six-inch ball. No matter, however, what maybe the size or diameter of the ball which may be misplayed from the alleybed A at either side into my improved ballgutter the said ball will center itself on the concave gutter bottom 0 and will travel thence to its final destination in approximately a right line and without either impinging on the edge of the alley-bed or against the finished vertical side of the stringer D of the gutter.

By reference to Fig. 3 it will be observed that the largest-sized ball a when it may pass into the ball-gutter and thence into the pit cannot possibly touch the rear-corner pin m if said pin be standing, notwithstanding the fact that the said gutter has its bottom the same distance below the level of the bed A throughout its entire length. Thus the expense and objection of having the gutter sloped downwardly,as heretofore, (from about the point 1 to that marked 2, see Fig. 1,) to prevent a disturbance of said pin 'm is wholly avoided.

IIO

Having now so fully explained my novel concave, in cross-section, and operates to construction of ball-gutter that those skilled cause a ball rolling thereon to travel centrally in the art can make and use bowling-alleys thereof; all in substantially the manner and embodying myinvention, WhatIclaim as new, for the purposes hereinbefore set forth. 5 and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is In Witness whereof I have hereunto set my I5 The combination, With the bed, or ballway hand this 24th day of September 1898. A, of a bowling-alley; and a suitable stringer, WM. H. VVIGGINS. or strip, running parallel with the edge of the In presence of v alley-bed at a suitable distance therefrom, of W. A. SURLER, 10 a bottom piece C, the top surface of which is L. F. SILVA. 

